it that challenge to try everything—good or bad—that had led him to drugs, or simply the jet-setting lifestyle he’d led from his late teens, money giving him the freedom their restricted upbringing had denied them?
THE MEAL WAS simple but delicious, and, perhaps sensing an atmosphere he didn’t understand, it was his driver who kept the conversation going, with considerable help from the boy, who was happy to join in on any subject.
Although, Malik realised rather sadly, the man was steering the conversation so the boy could join in, no doubt because he had a child of the same age.
He was wondering how he’d react to children of his own—certainly he’d never experienced a meal like this as a child of Nimr’s age. He’d still have been eating with the women and listening to their high-pitched chatter and gossip—
‘Now, I think Sheikh Madani wishes to talk with your mother, young Nim, and Joe’s still at training, so how about I do your bath and bedtime story?’
Peter Cross’s words had broken into Malik’s memories, and Nimr was already excusing himself from the table, only too willing to have someone different supervising his bedtime routine.
‘Thanks, Peter,’ his hostess said, confirming Malik’s suspicions that the man was a close family friend.
Through their children or through the hospital?
He didn’t ask as Lauren was speaking again.
‘I’ll just rinse off these dishes and stack the dishwasher and be with you shortly.’
‘I can rinse dishes,’ Malik said, stacking dirty plates together, before standing up and carrying them to the sink.
He read the surprise on her face, and couldn’t help adding, ‘Don’t judge me by my brother,’ before setting to work on his task, rinsing the plates and passing them to Lauren—he had to get used to calling her that in his mind—to stack into place.
She was silent as she worked, but as she shut the door of the machine and set it to wash, she said quietly, ‘I didn’t know him well—your brother, I mean. He’d barely arrived in Australia when the—the accident happened.’
Which made him wonder if he’d spoken too harshly.
He sought to make amends.
‘I’ve often wondered if I knew him at all,’ he told her, ‘although as children we were inseparable.’
‘It’s because Nim doesn’t have a brother—or even a sister—that I like him to go to kindy where he can play with other children, and he’s so looking forward to going to school next year.’
‘Aren’t we all,’ a deep, slightly fractured voice said, and Malik turned to see Joe in the doorway, back from wherever he had been.
‘Peter tells me you’re wanted in the bedroom for a goodnight kiss,’ he said to Lauren, who, to Malik’s considerable surprise, said quietly, ‘Perhaps you’d like to say goodnight, too.’
‘Joe and I have things to discuss about the new boys’ club we want to set up in the community centre, so we’ll talk in the kitchen,’ Peter said as they met in the short passage. ‘Would you like us to bring coffee in to you and the Sheikh?’
* * *
Lauren shook her head.
This was all getting far too matey, in her opinion, but she was thankful the two men would be there.
‘Do they worry about you, that they are staying close?’ her guest asked, as they walked towards the boy’s bedroom.
‘I doubt that, but they know it would be wrong of them to leave me here with a stranger.’
‘You have loyal friends,’ he said with a smile, and that was a mistake. Not the smile, which was warm and slightly teasing, but the way it made her feel.
Tingles from a smile?
For pity’s sake, this was the man who had quite possibly killed her entire family—except for Nim.
Yet she’d been conscious of that inner—what, tension?—from the moment she’d first seen him and wondered if that’s how Tariq had made Lily feel...
Stupid! That’s what it was.
Especially as the man wanted to take her child...
She opened the door into the bedroom, but the excitement of the visitors had meant she’d left it too late to get her goodnight kiss.
But she could leave one, and she leant over the child she loved with all her heart and kissed him gently on his cheek.
She turned to the man who stood watching in the doorway.
‘He’ll be sorry to have missed you,’ she said quietly, but knew he hadn’t heard her. He was watching the sleeping boy and the sadness she read in his eyes was almost more than she could stand.
She slipped past him, heading for the living room, aware he was following her, horribly aware of him.
She took the armchair and waved the man towards the not-very-comfortable sofa, which had been cheap and had very quickly taken to the shape of her and Nim’s posteriors so no one else’s quite seemed to fit it.
And she wouldn’t think about his posterior either...
‘So talk!’ she said, determined to find out exactly what he wanted. Why he’d come. She knew he’d come for Nim, but she wanted to know why.
‘Do you know much about Madan?’
The question, when it finally came, surprised her, as he’d seemed more like a man who’d cut to the chase and she knew the chase, in this case, was Nim.
‘I know the usual stuff from the internet. It’s a small country, with enough oil beneath its sands to make it wealthy. Incredibly wealthy, if the way Tariq threw money around was any indication. I know my sister hated it, preferring to spend her time jet-setting around the world to glitzy hotels and ultra-trendy resorts—to wherever there was a party going on. Although, to be fair, that all stopped once she became pregnant.’
She watched the man as she spoke, and saw his face darken, but when he spoke she could hear regret, and also love, in his voice.
‘My brother was not a wise man.’
Lauren waited. He was here for a reason, so it was his story to tell.
He began slowly. ‘My father, in his declining years, was also not wise. His mind weakened and he began to listen to those around him—to listen to advice that would benefit the speaker but not the country. He had governed well but strictly, refusing to allow the new-found wealth of the country to change it.’
A pause, before he added rather bitterly, ‘In any way!’
‘And
